"Liberation is to come when the purely mechanistic nature of the catastrophic agents is
recognized. Man will then see that there was no question of punishment
or aggression because the agents were not beings motivated to punish or
destroy ... [and he] will have to keep casting [his] ancestors in the role
of fools of the cosmos." - William Mullen

"The literature of religious
experience abounds in references to the pains and terrors overwhelming those
who have come, too suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of the
Mysterium tremendum." - A. Huxley, The Doors of
Perception (1954)

"Man's greatest instrument,
his psyche, is little thought of, and it is often mistrusted and despised.
'It's only psychological' too often means: It is nothing." - C. G. Jung, Man and His
Symbols (1964)

"Like the early memory of a
single man, so the early memory of the human race belongs to the student of
psychology. Only a philosophically and historically, but also analytically
trained mind can see in the mytholo­gical subjects their true content . . .
" - I. Velikovsky, From AAAS
Speech (1974)

Introduction

Somewhere between the infinite
reaches of outer space−the Cosmos−and the labyrinthine recesses of the
human mind−the Cosmos Within−lie two of Mankind's most profound
psychological and emo­tional creations−Myth and Religion. Together, they
have served man's basic need to bridge the known and the unknown, the finite
and the immeasurable, the tangible and the intangible.

Yet, for all their
significance, the origin of myth and religion remains tantalizingly elusive
and continues to provide one of the most intriguing problems in the study of
man.(1) Despite the varied and monumental attempts to discover their true
source, no single hypothesis has been universally accepted, for the simple
reason that scholars have been unable to free themselves from uniformitarian
dogmas which look for the solution in the common and the ordinary at the one
extreme, or the excessively obscure at the other.(2)

Recognizing that the solution
is not to be found in the everyday events of life, recent works have turned
to the celestial sphere and sought the answer in the awe-inspiring heavens.
But even these contain obvious ad hoc explanations which present
neither a unifying hypothesis nor a substantive example of causation.

Hamlet's Mill: An
Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time
is a case in point.
This scholarly but abstruse work is a study in futility. While
concluding that the celestial sphere is the wellspring of myth, the
authors−de Santillana and von Dechend−have, nonetheless,
conformed to a uniformitarian cosmology in their interpretation of
myth. This has thus prevented them from perceiving the real
reason behind an influential cosmos though they
unequivocally conclude that the great myths of the world do have a
common origin, that mythic actions are those of celestial bodies,
and that mythic geography is not that of the Earth but rather the
heavens. (3)

In point of fact,
"astrogeography" was so implicit in the beliefs of the ancients that
there appears to be a compelling force which not only caused Mankind
to raise its collective eyes and arms in cosmic supplica­tion but to
conceive celestial cities as well. "The assumption that all things
on earth have their counterparts in Heaven was a belief universally
accepted in Babylonia in the pre-Christian centuries and widely
accepted throughout Western Asia in the Apocalyptic and Gnostic
period. It gave rise to a passionate belief in 'the mansions in the
skies', and Jesus taught His disciples, 'In my Father's house are
many mansions.'"(4)

In the Sumerian
Creation myth, the storm god Enlil is reported "as being in the city
of Nipper−a cosmic, celestial Nippur, antedating the creation of
the earth, but destined to serve ultimately as the model of the
terrestrial Nippur, for the Sumerian cosmic pattern was, in
general,designed on the principle of Heaven (Sky),Earth
parallelism."(5)

In Mesopotamia, it
would appear that "all the Babylonian cities had their archetypes in
the constellations: Sippara in Cancer, Nineveh in Ursa-. Major, Assur in Arcturus, etc.
Sennacherib has Nineveh built according to
the 'form ... delineated from distant ages by the writing of the
heaven-of-stars'." Even "the Tigris has its model in the star Anunit
and the Euphrates in the star of the Swallow."

Other areas of the world also possessed a comparable cosmological
"religio-philosophical" attitude regarding the creation of
terrestrial cities. "A celestial Jerusalem was created by God
before the city was built by the hand of man ... ; in India: all the
Indian royal cities, even the modem ones, are built after the
mythical model of the celestial city where, in the age of gold
(in illo tempore), the Universal Sovereign dwelt."

"In Iranian cosmology of the Zarvanitic tradition, 'every terrestrial phenomenon, whether
abstract or concrete, corresponds to a celestial, transcendent
invisible term, to an 'idea' in the Platonic sense'."(5a)

A similar but slightly
variant concept was likewise to be found in ancient Egypt. There,
the existence of a heavenly Ann (the Heliopolis of the Greeks) was
to the Egyptians what Jerusalem was to the Jews and what Mecca still
is to the Moslems. "The heavenly Anu was the capital of the
mythological world . . . [However,] like many other mythological
cities . . . the heavenly Ann had no geographical [specific
celestial] position." (6)

"Man constructs
according to an archetype. Not only do his city or his temple have
celestial models; the same is true of the entire region that he
inhabits ... This participation by urban cultures in an archetypal
[celestial] model is what gives them their reality and their
validity." On the other hand, all "wild, uncultivated regions and
the like are assimilated to chaos" and when possession and
exploitation of new territory begins "rites are performed that
symbolically repeat the act of Creation: the uncultivated zone is
first 'cosmicized,' then inhabited." (6a)

The art historian
Eugenio Battisti, of the University of Genoa, has also acknowledged
the cosmic impetus for Mankind's thought. But he, too, apparently
restricts his ideas to uniformitarian precepts seemingly
uncon­cerned with catastrophic factors.

The observation of
celestial phenomena and the concept of their rela­tionships with
historical events and with human life have always been of
fundamental importance for religious concepts, for philosophy, and
for the actions of individuals and of societies . . . astronomy and
astrology have [thus] had an important impact ... in the direct
depiction of heavenly bodies [and] in the symbolic representation
inspired by astral mythology . . . . Certainly one must in this
connection speak not so much of a consistent and uniform body of
iconographical themes, as of an emotive source of conceptual
inspiration, one which is esoteric and extremely varied, but
which is at the same time intense and constantly recurrent in all
cultures and at all times. (7)

Cataclysm

Surely, the
ordinary unfolding of celestial events alone cannot account for
ancient man's astral obsession, his theological concern, or his
mythopeic endeavors.(8) "Daily things do not evoke astonishment and
influence but little a people's creative faculty . . . even local
catastrophes, regarded as very violent, do not serve for the
creation of cosmic myths."(9)

Why, then, should the
cosmos have exerted such an intense influence on Mankind's
mythology, religion, and philosophy which are all too fre­quently
imbued with an inherent sense of dread and cataclysmic
preoccu­pation? "Why," asks Immanuel Velikovsky "is theomachy the
central theme of all cosmogonical myths? Should not a thinking man
pause and wonder why the ancients in both hemispheres worshipped
planetary gods; why temples were erected to them, . . . why [were]
sacrifices, even human sacrifices brought to them?"(10) It is
Velikovsky himself in Worlds inCollision, with its
rigorously detailed and documented application of cos­mological
euhemerism, who provides us with the fundamental and plausible
answer: Cosmic catastrophism and its simultaneously overwhelming
universal effect were clearly responsible for a common astral
origin of world religions, particular eschatological beliefs, and
the inculcation of unshakable fear.(11) The myths and legends of all
peoples conclusively support this contention.

An eighteenth century
forerunner of Velikovsky, Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger (1722-1759),
likewise "analyzed the cosmogonies and mythol­ogies of several
far-spread peoples of the Earth, such as Germans, Greeks, Jews,
Arabs, Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, Peruvians, Mexicans, and Caribs,
concluding that rites, ceremonials, and myths reflect the fact that
the human race was subjected to a series of cosmic convulsions
..."(12)

Scholars try to
explain the widespread common themes of mythology by a slow
diffusion of ideas from one culture to another. Velikovsky contends
that the commonality of world myth is the result of mankind',s
common experience and common observation involving global
disasters arising from extraterrestrial causes. Catastrophism
and the conditioned fear generated by any unusual celestial
movement, therefore, inspired a "related" world-wide polygenetical
mythology which was similar yet varied according to local
interpretations. Admittedly, modification could conceivably occur
through a later diffusionist intrusion but basic cultural uniqueness
would be retained. (13)

How else are we to
explain the universal worship of the planet Venus, its prominent
rank in religious pantheons, and the numerous ceremonies associated
with the Morning Star? (14)

What, for example,
could have "induced the Mayas to call by the name of Scorpion the
constellation known to us and to the ancients by the same name? The
outlines of this constellation do not resemble the shape of this
insect. It is 'one of the most remarkable coincidences in
nomenclature.' The constellation, which is not at all like a
scorpion, probably was called by this name because a comet that
looked like a scorpion appeared in it." (15)

In many unrelated
cultures we find similarities in form and emblem which suggest a
common cosmic implication: for example, the dome, either with or
without a central opening; the pyramid; the tower; the mound or
staircase; the canopy (which imitates the vault of the heavens); the
egg or gilded ball, frequently an attribute of imperial power; the
crown, etc. The greatest difficulty in the study of such forms
arises from the amalgam of cultures present everywhere, as a result
of which archaic cosmological concepts survive alongside other
concepts either of a later period or foreign in origin.(16)

Worlds in Collision
is thus a
work that is primarily a reconstruction "built upon studying
the human testimony as preserved in the heritage of all ancient
civilizations [which] tell in various forms the very same narrative
that the trained eye of a psychoanalyst could not but recognize as
so many variants of the same theme." (17)

This theme, the
catastrophically changing order of the cosmos with its attendant
sense of awe and wonder, must have furnished ancient man with a
fluctuating and complex source of celestial imagery. This then
precipitated numerous attempts at harmonizing meaningful depictions
of the divine with the ever-varying "cosmic picture."

W. F. Albright, the
late dean of American archaeologists, once alluded to the latter
phenomenon when he wrote that "we have only to glance at the
mythologies, the iconographies, and the litanies to see that
Near­Eastern gods shifted in disconcerting fashion from astral form
to zoomorphic, dendromorphic, and composite manifestations."(18)
Albright failed, however, to make the "cosmic connection" where
ancient myth and reli­gion were concerned preferring the conclusion
that "the sublime descrip­tion of the theophany may owe certain
features to the two most majestic spectacles vouchsafed to mankind:
a sub-tropical thunder-storm and a volcanic eruption." (19)

And yet, despite
occasional localized upheaval, cosmic forces remained the
preeminent concern of the ancients. At times, in almost frenetic
desperation, they would switch Planetary allegiance, like betters at
a roulette wheel, in the hope of winning heavenly and divine favor.
(20) Eventually, well-nigh all astral deities came to be equated
with the Sun or Moon as the power of the ancient gods was diminished
through rational­ization, obliviscence, and the acceptance of the
present cosmic arrangement as being retroactively constant, eternal
and unalterable.

The Fountain of Forgetfulness

In order to avoid a
"mental overload" the human mind is geared to repel and filter out
excessive stimuli and, that being the case, it is highly difficult,
if not impossible, to imagine what the psychological effect
of a world conflagration wrought by cosmic fury would be. It would
certainly not be unreasonable to expect a Lethean[1]
*
defense mechanism to assert itself.

The above statements
gain credence from the personal experiences of the noted author
Aldous Huxley which were recounted in his book TheDoors
of Perception. While under the self-imposed influence of
Mescalin, Huxley experienced a form of transcendent consciousness
which, for him, "illuminated the anatomy of inner space and
projected the idea that man himself is a b ridge between two worlds,
the earthly and the supersensible. It also publicized the then
little known fact that the brain, nervous system and sense organs
function as a protective barrier against what would otherwise be an
overwhelming intrusion of the 'Total Mind', acting like a reducing
valve to ration out that 'measly trickle of the kind of
conscious­ness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of
this planet'."(21)

As the world -of
ancient man was plunged into a state of primeval chaos resulting
from cosmic catastrophism, physical helplessness could, therefore,
be overcome by psychological retreat. The actual cataclysmic
consequences were suppressed through mythic and epic conversion−a
form of "fantasy escape"−while memory fadeout also acted as a
healing device; the mind blotted out reality displacing the
terrifying events from the conscious "into the unconscious strata of
the mind, where they continue to live and express themselves in
bizarre forms of fear."(22) Velikovsky views this process of
forgetting and suppression as a form of "collective amnesia."(23)

The modern
mythographer Giorgio de Santillana, one of the authors of the work
previously referred to, Hamlet's Mill, spent considerable
effort delving into the problem of astromythology. But, he excluded
the catas­trophic element in considering the cosmic source of
myth and religion which is surprising in as much as he feels that
contemporary science has been led by its modem evolutionary and
psychological bent to forget about the main source of myth, which
was astronomy−the Royal Science . . . Today expert philologists
tell us that Saturn and Jupiter are names of vague deities,
subterranean or atmospheric, superimposed on the planets at a 'late'
period; they neatly sort out folk origins and 'late' derivations,
all unaware that planetary periods, sidereal and synodic, were known
and rehearsed in numerous ways by celebrations already traditional
in archaic times . . . Ancient historians would have been aghast had
they been told that obvious things were to become unnoticeable.
Aristotle was proud to state it as known that the gods were
originally stars, even if popular fantasy had later obscured this
truth.(24)

Velikovsky, in
Worlds in Collision, had already previously drawn attention to
the solarizing tendency vis-a-vis the ancient gods which began with
Macrobius in the fourth Christian century. Earlier religious
beliefs were disregarded as the cult of Sol Invictus gained
ascendancy in the days of the Late Roman Empire. (25)

Yet, "in former times
the planets played a decidedly more important role in the
imagination of peoples, to which fact their religions give
testi­mony." The enumeration of the Sun and Moon "among the seven
planets sometimes startles the modern scholar, because these two
luminaries are so much more conspicuous than the other planets:
[still] the dominance of Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, and Mars [in
antiquity] must startle us even more as long as we do not know what
was displayed on the celestial scene a few thousand years ago." (26)

It is highly probable
that the very cosmic terrors which inspired reli­gious and
eschatological beliefs may, in themselves, be responsible for mental
blocks inhibiting their ideological acceptance thereby suggesting
that man's desire not to know is often as great as his desire
to know.

Jung and the
Collective Unconscious

Carl Gustav Jung, the
famous Swiss psychiatrist, was born on July 26, 1875 and early in
his career for a short but intensive period of time came under the
sway of Sigmund Freud with whom he eventually broke. Jung was very
much concerned with the unconscious realm of man's mind which he
divided into the Personal Unconscious and the Collective
Un­conscious. The former, he contended, consists of "forgotten,
repressed, subliminally perceived and felt material of all kinds";
the latter "does not include personal acquisitions specific to our
individual ego, but only con­tents resulting 'from the inherited
possibility of Psychical functioning in general, namely from the
inherited brain structure'."(27)

Further, Jung declared
that "the unconscious is older than . . . consciousness. It is the
'primal datum' out of which consciousness ever arises afresh [and]
the unconscious manifests itself as though it were outside space and
time."(28) Moreover, "the collective unconscious con­tains the
whole spiritual heritage of mankind's evolution born anew in the
brain structure of every individual."(29)

Finally, "the
collective unconscious is made up of contents which, regardless of
historic era or social or ethnic group, are the deposit of mankind's
typical reactions since primordial times to universal human
situations such as fear, danger, the struggle against superior power
. . .the power of the bright or the dark principle . . ."(30)

Since, according to
Velikovsky, the collective unconscious acts as "a receptacle and
carrier of ideas deposited there in primeval times, which plays an
important role in our concepts and actions . . . we may well wonder
to what extent the terrifying experiences of world catastrophes have
become part of the human soul and how much, if any, of it can be
traced in our beliefs, emotions, and behavior as directed from the
uncon­scious or subconscious strata of the mind."(31)

There are numerous
examples of what seems to be the unconscious memory of these past
events breaking through into the conscious and thus playing a
dramatic role in behavior. Such is the case, apparently of the
seventeenth century author John Bunyan. "As the Puritan teaching
spread around him, Bunyan's deviltry was disturbed by thoughts of
death, the Last Judgment, and hell. Once he dreamed that he saw
all the skyon fire, and the earth splitting beneath him.
He woke in terror, and frightened the family with his cries: 'O
Lord, have mercy on me! . . . The Day of Judgment is come, and I am
not prepared."(32)

Another instance comes
from a dream received by Jung from an acquaintance which the latter
had had on May 27, 1957. The dream con­tained a reference to a
sphere which approached the earth at high velocity and was at first
thought to be Jupiter in aberration from its proper orbit.

The object, however,
though large, was then seen as being much too small for Jupiter; and
as it continued on course bringing with it the realiza­tion that it
must certainly make a terrific impact upon the earth, fear was felt
in which awe was more predominant." Soon "another and yet another
sphere emerged from the horizon and sped towards the earth."(33)

Jung was not
unfamiliar with the "Jupiter motif" and ultimately inter­preted the
dream as fear of a new World War "although, to all appear­ances, a
cosmic catastrophe is about to happen." (34)

During his research
for Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky was confronted with the
question: "Was it the planet Jupiter or Venus that caused the
catastrophe of the time of the Exodus?"(35) The problem as to which
planetary body was the harbinger of doom was the result of a
confusion on the part of the ancients themselves as to "whether the
planet Jupiter or its offspring was approaching" and the duality
expressed in their mythological handling of the real event. "At an
earlier time, Jupiter had already caused havoc in the planetary
family, the earth included, and it was there­fore only natural to
see in the approaching body the planet Jupiter."(36)

Freud
and Anamnesis

Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939), too, was concerned with and searched for the primordial
urges in present day man. He came to believe that the earliest
experiences of mankind and the way they were assimilated created a
general behavioral pattern not unlike that found in the individual.
In the latter, the "earliest impressions, received at a time when
they were hardly able to talk, manifested themselves later in an
obsessive fashion, although those impressions themselves are not
consciously remembered." (37)

Freud also concluded
"that the mental residue of . . . primeval times has become a
heritage which, with each new generation, needs only to be awakened,
not to be reacquired."(38) He also subscribed to the notion that the
events of the past had been "repressed" but was analytically vague
as to the actual nature of those events. (39)

Freudian therapy, for
those who are neurotically reenacting their repressed traumatic
experiences from a subconscious compulsion involves anamnesis−a
recalling to mind on the conscious level those events which are
buried in an individual's psychic history. In Velikovskian terms,
those events were both traumatic and real; early man's suffering was
caused by "disorders in the solar system of a purely mechanical
nature. Early man interpreted these disorders as actions of
divinities with motivations that resembled his own. His two prime
reactions took the opposite forms of guilt and aggression. He felt
guilt insofar as he fantasized that the gods were destroying man to
punish him, and he became aggressive insofar as he identified with
the gods to the point of imitating them."(40)

Freud believed that
"the obscure sense of guilt which has been common to man since
prehistoric times, and which in many religions has been condensed
into the doctrine of original sin, is probably the outcome of a
blood-guiltiness incurred by primitive man" whose "primal crime must
have been a parricide, the killing of the primal father of the
primitive human horde, whose image in memory was later transfigured
into a deity."(41)

But what could have
induced this particular "primal crime?" Freud seems to have
overlooked the most significant fact that the major myths of mankind
tell of the supersession of father by son on a cosmic level
where one planetary god supplanted another, often through violent
means.

In purely physical
terms, the divine succession most likely reflected a
catastrophically changing cosmos. Is it not logical, therefore, to
assume that Early man's psychological attitude and his physical
behavior also reflected, in a mimicking way, the actions of an
awe-inspiring cosmos?

Boulanger has also
"argued that these catastrophes shaped the human mind, causing among
other things a deep seated psychological trauma: 'We still tremble
today as a consequence of the deluge and our institutions ,till pass
on to us the fears and the apocalyptic ideas of our first fathers.
Terror survives from race to race The child will dread in perpetuity
what frightens his ancestors'." (42)

How, then, is man to
break his patterns of guilt, aggression, and fear? "Liberation is
to come when the purely mechanistic nature of the catastrophic
agents is recognized. Man will then see that there was no question
of punishment or aggression because the agents were not beings
motivated to punish or destroy ... [and he] will have to keep
casting [his] ancestors in the role of fools of the cosmos."(43)

Terror Unmasked

To those individuals
who would view the ethnological condition and cosmological beliefs
of ancient and primitive man strictly from the social, historical or
agricultural standpoint, with only the occasional terrestrial
disturbances a discordant factor, a condition of scholarly myopia
must inevitably develop. (44)

A good example is
found in the studies of the late Henri Frankfort, a renowned
Orientalist, both singly and with others. In Kingship and theGods, for example, Frankfort presented a Sumerian poem which
sup­posedly evokes the memory of a golden age: (45)

In those days there
was no snake, there was no scorpion . . . There was no lion, there
was no wild dog(?), no wolf,

There was no fear, no
terror,

Man had no opponent.

In those days the land
Shubur (East) . . .

Discordant Sumer
(South), the land of the "decrees of princeship," Uri (North), the
land having all that is needful,

The land Martu (West),
resting security,

The whole universe,
the people in unison (?)

To Enlil with one
tongue gave praise.

A discussion of the
god Enlil immediately follows while no attempt at poetical analysis
is made. Frankfort was primarily interested instead in the early
Mesopotamian "consciousness of solidarity" or sense of "oneness"
which yielded later to separatist concepts of city-states and strict
politico-religious divisions resulting in territorial fragmentation
not generally found in Egypt.

That the original
solidarity of early Mesopotamia may have been broken for reasons
other than the character of the land, never occurred to Frankfort;
and consequently the Sumerian poem is totally overlooked as literary
evidence of celestial disturbances in historical times. But could
there have been some outside force which was responsible for
irretrievably disrupting the initial unity of Mesopotamia
aside from armed conflicts and the deficiencies of political
institutions?

Unfortunately,
Frankfort, along with his colleagues Groenewegen-Frankfort, Wilson,
and Jacobsen, cannot see beyond terrestrial limitations. To them,
cosmic events signify the order of the natural world−a purely
earthbound conception. (47)

Wilson subscribes to
the theory that the Egyptian cosmos, like the Nile valley, "had
limited space but reassuring periodicity."(48) Jacobsen and the
Frankforts tend to adroitly circumvent the identification of any
specific cosmic phenomena.

But now let us
reexamine the Sumerian poem in the light of a cos­mological
discussion.

Velikovsky has brought
attention to the fact that "in the Babylonian astrological texts it
is said that 'a star takes the shape of divers animals: lion,
jackal, dog, pig, fish'."(49) Further, Velikovsky contends that
Mars, due to atmospheric distortion resulting from celestial
contact, resembled a wolf or jackal (50) and the fight
between the serpent Midgard, "the brightsnake gaping
in the heaven above," and the wolf Fenris, "the foaming wolf"
of the Edda presented the celestial "clash" of Venus and Mars. (51)

Comets also appear as
a "pageant of the sky" and "actually every comet has its peculiar
shape which may change during the visibility of the comet." (52) On
one of the Babylonian astronomical tablets it states that ,.a star
flared up and its light radiated bright as day, and as it blazed, it
lashed its tail like an angry scorpion." (53)

While it is true that
the references to the cosmological phenomena cited above post-date
Sumerian times, it is not unreasonable-to suppose that similar
appearing celestial images were also seen in the days of Sumer. It
may even be that the later Babylonian texts perpetuated much older
Mesopotamian astronomical observations. With this imagery in mind,
it is now possible at the least to approach the above quoted poem
with a new insight in the hope of extracting its deeper and more
profound meaning.

We need only ask the
following questions: Why should a developing urban society
protected by city walls (54) look upon certain animals with fear,
nay terror,(55) while nostalgically recollecting its blissful
past? Are the animals referred to merely a recognizable allegorical
substitute for a far greater threat? What could the expression "one
tongue" signify?

Terror
in the Year 1000

In his last written
work, left unfinished by his death, the great French scholar Henri
Focillon expended considerable energy analyzing the psy­chological
atmosphere surrounding the year 1000 (A.D.) and the concept of
millenarianism. (56)

He observed that "the year 1000 presents a picture of strong
contrasts [and] while there is no text that allows us to assert that
in its obscure strata it was shaken by the fear of the world's end,
yet fear−an
ill-definedfear feeding on everything−was dominant
nonetheless. That fear exceeds the year in point of time, it was
present earlier and does not end when the year ends."(57)

It cannot be denied
that an end of the world attitude prevailed as the year 1000
approached. But Focillon was unable to explain in a totally
satisfactory manner "the problem of the terrors" as they related to
the year 1000 and was ultimately powerless to ascribe the terrors to
any one single factor. He did demonstrate, however, that they
existed independ­ently of the year 1000.(58)

Whether or not the
year 1000 should have even been designated as the apocalyptic moment
is questionable. The eschatological cognizance of that date was 1)
both a function of the accepted length of cyclical ter­mination,
itself variable; 2) the uncertain chronological starting point for
computing the passage of a millennium.(59)

The best and most
reliable contemporary source of information dealing with "the
millennium syndrome" is Raoul Glaber (60) who was educated at Cluny
and was a world traveller. To Glaber the year 1000 marked the
"imminent end of the world" when Satan, "the prince of
metamor­phoses" would soon be unleashed. And then in the year
1000 something did happen:

It appeared in the month of
September, not long after nightfall, and remained visible for nearly
three months. It shone so brightly that its light seemed to fill
the greater part of the sky, then it vanished at cock's crow. But
whether it is a new star which God launches into space, or whether
He merely increases the normal brightness of another star, only He
can decide who in the mysterious secrecy of His wisdom prepares all
things. What appears established with the greatest degree of
certainty is that this phenomenon in the sky never appears to men
without being the sure sign of some mysterious and terrible event.
And indeed a fire soon consumed the church of St. Michael the
Archangel, built on a promontory in the ocean, which had always been
the object of special veneration throughout the whole world.(61)

Despite the collective
reaction to this cosmic phenomenon which resulted in a spontaneous
religious procession−"a picture of anguished humanity" in the words
of Focillon himself−the full import of the event is, nonetheless,
surprisingly downgraded by the Frenchman.

Focillon dismissed the
response to "the comet of the year 1000" on the grounds that it "is
not the sole example of a prodigy in the sky during the [general]
period" under consideration since another "meteor" appeared in
1022.(62) Yet, a reaction did occur and a highly acute one at that!
Thus, when confronted with a logical solution to "the problem of the
terrors"−subconscious fear of cosmic catastrophism−Focillon was
reluctant and even unwilling to accept it.

We must wonder at
Focillon's own pedantic and psychological attitude. He either
became so scholastic in his study of "millenarian terror" and "an
end of the world" Mentality(63) that he unintentionally remained
in­conclusive and rambling in his attempt to uncover the real
psychological basis for the terrors−which he correctly perceived
were not bound to the year 1000; or, Focillon was unable to fathom
the underlying psychological cause of medieval man's terror for he
himself, in failing to completely grasp the often overwhelming
effect of celestial phenomena, may have possessed his own defensive
psychological blind spot on the matter. Perhaps Focillon
unknowingly shared the same subconscious fear as those he analyzed
and so, like the physician who could not heal himself, could not
properly diagnose his patient. To put it another way, the final
precise revelation was deliberately unconsciously avoided because it
could not be faced. What else can we conclude from Focillon's
indecisive circumlocution?(64)

As Velikovsky has
observed−"comets, because of their causal rela­tion to world
catastrophes, and also because of their terrifying appearance, were
the kind of phenomenon to kindle the imagination of peoples. But
for some reason, the impression they must have made on the peoples
of antiquity is not considered in explanation of myths and legends"
nor properly evaluated in explanation of mankind's ever present and
unwav­ering subconscious fear. (65)

Witch Hunts

The seventeenth
century presents a picture of fear and crisis not unlike "the
problem of the terrors" which cast such a pall over the period
im­mediately surrounding the year 1000; astronomy and history
apparently conspired to reenforce an already impending sense of
disaster.

Ever since 1618 at least
there had been talk of the dissolution of society or of the world;
and the undefined sense of gloom of which we are constantly aware in
those years was justified sometimes by new inter­pretations of
Scripture, sometimes by new phenomena in the skies. (66)

The appearance in 1618
of a brilliant new comet, with a tail fifty million miles long,
seemed to support the prophets of doom. James I of England "was
convinced that it was an omen, not only of the fall of the House of
Stuart, but also of the Thirty Years War (1618-48). John Evelyn,
the diarist, also blamed the comet for the war."(67)

Yet these reactions
are strange indeed since the wars of the seventeenth century were,
in a sense, only a resumption of those of the sixteenth cen­tury.
But for all that, the entire fabric of the seventeenth century is
dramatically altered. "It is broken in the middle, irreparably
broken, and at the end of it, after the revolutions, men can hardly
recognize the be­ginning. Intellectually, politically, morally, we
are in a new age, a new climate. It is as if a series of rainstorms
has ended in one final thunder­storm which has cleared the air and
changed, permanently, the tempera­ture of Europe."(68)

Even the intellectual
background of seventeenth century Europe shows that the sources of
upheaval were "deep-seated and anticipated, if only vaguely
anticipated, even before the accidents which launched it."

It was at this time that
cyclical theories of history became fashionable and the decline and
fall of nations was predicted, not only from Scripture and the
stars, but also from the passage of time and the organic processes
of decay. Kingdoms, declared a Puritan preacher in 1643, after
touching lightly on the corroborative influence of the comet of
1618, last for a maximum period of 500 or 600 years 'and it is known
to all of you how long we have been since the conquest'.(69)

Like the time of the
year 1000, an end of the world syndrome pre­vailed. Once again a
dormant but virile fear embedded in mankind's psychic makeup
evidently reasserted its presence.

It is an interesting but
undeniable fact that the most advanced scientists of the early
sixteenth century included also the most learned and literal
students of biblical mathematics; and in their hands science and
religion converged to pinpoint, between 1640 and 1660, the
dissolution of society, and the end of the world.(70)

The seventeenth
century also witnessed the European witch-craze the product of an
inexplicable "great fear" that enveloped the continent. "When a
'great fear' takes hold of society, that society looks naturally to
the stereotype of the enemy in its midst; and once the witch had
become the stereotype, witchcraft would be the universal
accusation."(71)

The appearance of the
witches thus provided a necessary scapegoat at a time when European
society in all its aspects demanded one. And what is even more
amazing is the fact that witches manifested themselves
voluntarily as though responding instinctually to the scapegoat
needs of the moment. At the same time, as though unable to resist
a lapse intoirrationality, "some of the most original
and cultivated men of the time not only accepted the theory of
witch-craft, but positively devoted their genius to its
propagation."(72)

Perhaps therefore the
motivating roots for the seventeenth century European
witch-craze are not to be found in any contemporary milieu after
all. Perhaps the strata of mankind's psyche should be searched
instead in order to see if the residue of terrifying past
experiences regarding the cosmos were responsible. (73)

Beyond the Year 1000

The generations of
mankind have not been allowed to forget the restless heavens."
Comets, meteors, and exploding stars have all re­peatedly
contributed their luminescent display upon the celestial screen.
Comets, in particular, have struck a frightening chord in the
heavenly theophany; and war, plague, famine, and the death and birth
of notables have all been attributed to their appearance. "From the
dawn of written history to the present the superstitious have always
regarded comets with

fear as the portents
of disaster." (74)

Man, by an inherited
instinct, regards the comet as a great terror and a great foe; and
the heart of humanity sits uneasily when one blazes in the sky.
Even to the scholar and the scientist they are a puzzle and a fear;
they are erratic, unusual, anarchical, monstrous−something let
loose, like a tiger of the heavens, athwart an orderly, peaceful,
and har­monious world. They may be impalpable and harmless
attenuations of gas, or they may be loaded with death and rain; but
in any event man can not contemplate them without terror.(75)

What is now called
Halley's Comet has, in itself, been a cause of extreme consternation
at those times when it appeared in days gone by. In 1066 it was
viewed as a precursor of the Norman Conquest. In 1456 the Turks,
who were besieging Belgrade, along with the city's defenders were
suddenly seized with fear at its appearance. "Pope Calixtus III,
himself struck with general terror, ordered public prayers to be
offered up for deliverance from the comet and the enemies of
Christianity."(76)

The description of the
comet of 1528 by the famous French surgeon Ambroise Pare is
especially noteworthy:

This comet was so horrible
and so frightful and it produced such great terror in the vulgar
that some died of fear and others fell sick. At the summit of it
was seen the figure of a bent arm, holding in its hand a great
sword, as if about to strike. On both sides of the rays of this
comet were seen a great number of axes, knives and blood Coloured
swords among which were a great number of hideous human faces with
beards and bristling hair.(77)

"In 1910 many Chinese
villagers shot off fireworks in the hopes of driving Halley's comet
away. In the United States many people believed that the comet of
1812 foretold the war of that year and that Donati's comet in 1858
heralded the Civil War."(78)

Like comets,
supernovae (faint stars that suddenly flare up with extreme
brilliance) have also caused consternation. One appeared in 1054
and was recorded in the Chinese annals, though surprisingly not
mentioned in any surviving European document. It "appeared so
bril­liant that for 23 days it could be seen in full daylight."(79)
Modern astron­omy has succeeded in locating the supernova of 1054 in
the constellation of Taurus.

In 1572, however,
Europe was shaken by a supernova later known as Tycho's Nova which
suddenly appeared in the constellation of Cas­siopeia and in only a
few days "grew brighter than Venus and could be seen in broad
daylight. The superstitious were certain that it heralded some
dreadful disaster, perhaps the end of the world."(80) Kepler's Nova
made its appearance in 1604, did not fade until 1606, and was as
brilliant as Jupiter but not as bright as its sixteenth century
predecessor.

In 1885 an extraordinary brilliance was observed in the galaxy known as the
Andromeda Nebula. The sudden stellar flareup lasted for 25 days and
"that single star shone more brightly than 10 million suns. Then it
faded to such an extent that it was no longer visible through the
most powerful telescopes." (81) Additional novae have also been
observed with telescopes and the unaided eye since 1890 without,
however, causing any undue alarm.

People have been
extremely frightened and intimidated by meteor showers as well. (82)
For example, "a spectacular display of meteors, visible over the
eastern half of the United States on the night of November 12, 1883,
convinced many terrified witnesses that the end of the world was at
hand. The display began before midnight and increased in intensity
as the night wore on. In the hours before dawn the meteors were as
thick as snowflakes and it appeared as though the heavens were
raining fire. Some of the meteors rivaled Jupiter or Venus in
brightness. One was reported to have been nearly as large as the
moon. It was estimated that 10,000 flashed across the sky in an
hour."(83)

Astronomers soon came
to recognize a periodicity to this cosmological phenomenon and also
realized that the meteors had come from one point in the
constellation of Leo. "This meant that the earth had collided with
a vast swarm of meteors."(84)

It has been suggested
that the Chicago fire of 1871 as well as less publicized Midwestern
and Farwestern fires were the result of a cometary flyby. "If the
detritus from the ephemeris of one such as Biela's comet did impinge
on our atmosphere, how much frozen methane or cyanogen would it take
to set six states afire, in a path that took a southwest to a
northeasterly direction about a thousand miles long by several
hundred wide?"(85)

As in other times, the
twentieth-century has not been without its share of celestial
excitement. On June 30, 1908 something from outer space
apparently collided with the Earth in the Tunguska area of central
Siberia producing a devastating mid-air explosion seconds
before impact. A "pillar of fire" was seen in Kirensk, 250 miles
away, while "horses were thrown down in an area south of Kansk, more
than 400 miles distant."(86) Had the celestial object arrived
slightly less than five hours later along the same latitude, it
would have leveled St. Petersburg (Lenin­grad) the capital of
Imperial Russia.(87)

Various theories have
been put forward to account for the Siberian disaster. It has been
proposed that the Earth was hit either by a comet, a giant meteor, a
chunk of antimatter, or a tiny "black hole." Even the possibility
that intelligent extraterrestrial beings caused a nuclear explosion,
or fired a laser beam at the Earth, or crashed in an attempt to land
here has been posited.

But, regardless of the
reason, something did strike our world and while "no
explanation satisfies everyone . . . we are left with the real
possibility of a recurrence. Should it take place without warning
in a populated region and resemble a nuclear blast, could it trigger
an atomic war?" (88)

According to Dr. H.
E.. Wood, an astronomer at Cape Town Observa­tory, the "Earth was in
grave danger of collision with a small planet astray in the solar
system" between the 25th and 30th of October in 1937. "There was
great excitement . . . the planet was rushing towards the Earth
almost in a straight line. Had it hit us, the international system
might have been altered . . . The planet missed us by only five and
a half hours. It is the narrowest escape the world has ever had
in the period of astronomical observations."(89)

There may be some
doubt concerning the authenticity of the celestial phenomenon
recounted above due to what appears to be a lack of corroborating
scientific documentation from other quarters. The descriptive
terminology employed, such as the word "planet," certainly gives one
reason to pause. Nevertheless, the probable reality of the
1937 observation cannot be entirely dismissed out of hand.

On August 10, 1972, a
meteor narrowly missed the Rocky Mountain states as it sped by the
Earth while travelling a celestial path. Recent studies have
concluded that had the object hit the Earth it would have done so
with a force equal to or four times as great as the Hiroshimaatomic bomb. Estimates have placed the weight of the meteor
somewhere between 1100 and 4000 tons. It approached the Earth with
a velocity of 10 miles per second "and if it had been at a slightly
lower altitude, the damage would have been very extensive."(90)

Prognostication

In endeavoring to
establish the historicity of "the words of Isaiah and of other seers
. . . of the Old Testament," Velikovsky criticized the exegetes
Maimonides and Spinoza for their insistent metaphorical conversion
of Biblical Scripture.(91)

"Events were called
miracles and were explained as subjective apper­ceptions or as
symbolic descriptions because they could not t)e otherwise accounted
for." Nevertheless, there is no "room for doubt that by 'stones
falling from the sky' were meant meteorites; by brimstone and pitch
were meant brimstone and pitch; by scorching blast of fire was meant
scorching blast of fire; by storm and tempest, storm and tempest; by
a darkened sun, by the earth removed from its place, by change of
time and seasons, were meant just these changes in the regular
processes of nature . . . Until the fall of meteorites in 1803,
science was sure that stones falling from the sky occurred only in
legends."(92)

Yet, through the
millennia, Mankind has repeatedly cringed before the cosmos.
Neither the great nor the lowly; the good nor the bad; the meek nor
the aggressor; the wealthy nor the poor; the pious nor the
irreverent have been spared a sense of anguish arising from the
"incon­stant heavens." And always the question Why? remains to mock
those who would evade it; while the most elaborate scientific
explanations for a uniformitarian cosmology stand to be confuted so
long as there is disregard for the human record and the reactions of
the human psyche.(93)

2. See the
articles "Theories of Myth and the Folklorist" by R. M. Dorson and
"The His­torical Development of Mythology" by Joseph Campbell in
Myth and Mythmaking, ed. by 14. A. Murray (Beacon Press:
Boston. 1969); A. D. Nock, "The Study of the History of Religion,"
Essays on Religion and the Ancient World (Oxford, 19721, pp.
331-340.

24. G. de
Santillana and H. von Dechend, Hamlet's Mill, op. cit., pp.
3-4; also see G. Eklund and G. Benfor, "If the Stars are Gods,"
Universe 4 (N. Y., 1974), pp. 121-159, espe­cially pp.
129-131......... Is the sun benevolent? How does it inspire your
daily life? Does it constantly rage? I don't know, and you don't
know either, and it's not a thing we can risk lying about, because
they [aliens] may very well know them­selves. To them, a star is a
living entity. It's a god, but more than our gods, because they can
see a star and feel its heat and never doubt that it's always
there."

29. C. G. Jung,
"The Structure of the Psyche" in The Structure and Dynamics of
thePsyche (Pantheon Books: N. Y., 1960), p. 152; "There
are some thoughts and opinions which we seem to take by inheritance:
we imbibe them with our mothers' milk; they are in our blood: they
are received insensibly in childhood" - I. Donnelly, op, cit., p.
424.

30. Jacobi,
op. cit., p. 10; ". . . . there is an untaught but universal
feeling which makes all mankind regard comets With fear and
trembling, and which unites all races of men in a universal belief
that some day the world will be destroyed by fire" - I.
Donnelly, Ibid., p. 424.

33. C. G. Jung,
Flying Saucers (N. Y., 1959), pp. 71-73 (emphasis added);
"Jung has ex­plained the UFOs as a projection of a psychic content
(of wholeness) that has at all times been symbolized by the circle.
In other words, this 'visionary rumor,' as can also be seen in many
dreams of our time, is an attempt by the unconscious collective
psyche to heal the split in our apocalyptic age by means of the
symbol of the circle." - see, Wan and His Symbols (Doubleday:
Garden City, 1969), p. 249.

93. See B. Steiger,
"Hurtling Horrors from Outer Space," Man's World, Oct. 1974, Vol.
20, no. 5, p. 52 - "Mankind cannot live in constant fear of horrors that
may hurtle at him from the sky, but neither can he walk about
complacently in a false security that his science and technology can
protect him from the inviolable, albeit often undiscernible, laws of the
universe and their rampaging off-shoots. No matter how optimistic one
may be, perhaps he cannot help occasionally glancing upward, The rub is
that with most of the hurtling horrors, from black holes to comets,
ducking won't help."

[1]*.
Amnesia; in Greek mythology, the waters of Lethe−a river in
Hades−produced forgetfulness.